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Liberal Education Imperiled3 2 7hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberaleducation worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit ofthe rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should becalled to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidentalcondition or circumstance. 39In his proposal for a University of Virginia, Jefferson laid out the aimsof his college. Among those things he believed should be taught included acurious reference to the “Law of Nature” as a teaching that should arise underthe general rubric of “government” courses. 40 According to Jefferson, one ofthe aims of college education at the university would beto expound the principles and structures of government, the laws whichregulate the intercourse of nations, those formed municipally for ourown government, and a sound spirit of legislation, which, banishing allarbitrary and unnecessary restraint on individual action, shall leave usfree to do whatever does not violate the equal rights of another. 41A liberal education, according to Jefferson, should instruct students in theknowledge of their rights and how they should exercise those rights “withorder and justice.” He asserts that education should develop the students’“reasoning faculties” and “enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, andinstill into them the precepts of virtue and order.” 42 Understanding our naturalrights and the law of nature not only leads to the improvement of moralsand sharpens our reason; it has the added benefit of helping citizens understandtheir duties to other human beings. Liberal education contemplates thelaws of nature, and hence the structure and order of our world. It is, then, aform of education in which the ends of life and of government become intelligible.43 It is the study of nature, of which man is a part. It is indisputable thatJefferson’s understanding of a liberal education carved out a spot for reasonto flourish. In his initial document to the Virginia legislature on the creationof the college, Jefferson asserted that in conformity with the Virginia Constitution,no religious seat would be established at the university. Indeed, the39Ibid., 415.40Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, 4 August 1818, in The Portable ThomasJefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 338. In his 1779 report on amendingthe charter of William and Mary College, Jefferson asserted that philosophy and the principlesof the Christian religion should be taught, but his proposal specifically mentioned philosophy andinstruction in the law of nature in a variety of forms and classes. See Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed.Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 432, 434.41Report of the Commissioners, 334.42Ibid.43Harry V. Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding, 41–42.